PC World India: Orkut Voted Best Of The Best

It looks like the boys and girls at Google have reason to celebrate as Orkut has won an award for being the best of the Indian social networks!

(PC World India) Orkut however, has been voted as the best of the lot. Though it is a global site, there are hordes of Indians using it, making it one of the most popular social networking sites.

In terms of user experience it is the easiest to navigate, with its straight forward, uncomplicated and clean interface.

Orkut was facing some stiff competition from sites like Yaari, Minglebox, Rediff, Sulekha not to mention Google's favorite foes competitors Yahoo and Microsoft.

Despite the victory, the article criticized Orkut's weakness regarding business networking which (in my opinion) may have been an over site as there are various forums doing some serious networking on Orkut (at least employment wise).

Either way, congrats to the Orkut team! And let us know when your comment section is open (as I'm sure your fans would love to drop by and share their thanks).

Orkutsphere Chatter (What Do You See?)

Note: Credit has to go to Danny Piccirillo for inspiring this idea on Inside Orkut. Be sure to check out his forum, Suicide, Self-harm, Depression which has been added to the Forums of Note section.

One item that I really enjoy about Orkut is the fact that you can find many interesting conversations, debates, artwork, video's, etc. to entertain you while catching up with friends and strangers from around the world.

Unfortunately, there is not enough time in the day to write up a post on all the fun things I find and (more often) items that friends email me. So instead of trying to highlight 50 random forum conversations (as that would take up way too much time), I decided to simply link to them above.

For those of you visiting this site, you may have noticed the Orkutsphere Chatter box above the post section. Here you can find interesting conversations that either friends email me about or I stumble upon while surfing Orkut.

So if any of you find something interesting in Orkut (or want to show off a cool community) let me know by either sending me a scrap or emailing me.

In case you missed the previous five highlights, here's a recap:

• President Bush: Defender of Muslims? Heh.


• All silent on the (orkut) Jewish front?


• Kiran's Album: It's all in the eyes


• How To: Painting oil paintings on wood


• Suggestion: Add Video/Audio profiles to Orkut

Note: And don't forget to check out the latest post from the Official Orkut blog!

Google Finally Launches An Orkut Blog! (Or Two)

(Hat Tip: Googlified)

Despite taking an eternity, Orkut has finally decided to communicate their thoughts directly to the blogosphere, and the first post belongs to the founder himself, Orkut Buyukkokten.

(Orkut English Blog) It's been more than three years since orkut first launched and now, at last, here's a blog to go with it (better late than never, right?). We hope that this will be a great way for you to learn about what's new on orkut, and get to know the orkut team. Here you'll read about new features, get tips on using old ones, and hear stories about how we work and who we are.

In the past you've communicated with us via our Help Center and Group, but we have not communicated with you as much as we would have liked. Since this blog is for you, we'd love to know what you want, so please let us know.

Google has also launched a blog for Brazilians in Portugese, which is great as half of their users come from that region.

So far comments are not enabled (come on Google, even Blogger has opened up their comment section, at least one of them) although hopefully that will change in the near future.

Orkut seems to be using Blogger's custom domain platform as someone seems to have occupied Orkut.blogspot.com. You can find the real Orkut blogs over at blog.orkut.com (for Brazilians) and en.blog.orkut.com (for the rest of us).